Legend of Zelda - Link x Reader - A Simple Wish

Chapter 3: Into the Mist

I already marked violence as a trigger warning on this story. Just to make it clear, violence coming up in this chapter.

Also, spider warning. There are a bunch of 'em.

(Yeah, sorry. I fear spiders too, so I don't know why I did this. This chapter made me feel uncomfortable as hell.)

Thick fog and spindly trees curling their skeletal fingers towards you surrounded your sight. Uncontrollably, you shivered. The air was cold, and slightly damp, small drops of dew sliding off the grass.

Soon, you came to a point where the Sheikah Slate stopped working. The map, at least. You turned behind you to see nothing but mist and leafless trees all around. You continued to walk forward - if you were going forward - for all you knew, you were going in endless circles. Everything looked the same. To help unsettle you further, (from the fact that you didn't know where you were going) eerie faces that seemed to shriek and cry in twisted agony cloaked themselves behind the grey, revealing themselves to be merely nothing more than the trees. From the corner of your eyes, they seemed to move and shake, as if they had begun to laugh. You couldn't tell if it was a figment of your imagination or reality. Yet there was no wind, not even a small breeze. Just a heavy chill sinking in the air, cold and almost... strangling.

The first sign that you weren't walking aimlessly into nowhere was a decrepit stone gate, slouching in foggy recesses further beyond: you only managed to see it by squinting at its murky shadow. The bare figure of the gate was all that was left, the walls remained deteriorating into the soil. In front were two stone torches, the burn of its flames everlasting despite the humid damp. There were no cracks or signs of crumbling in the torch-posts: presumably unaffected by the passage of time. When you went close, the fire blazed bright and warm, warding away the unnatural cold that was settling in around the forest.

Was this linked to the trial Zelda spoke of?

You wished that she did know what the trial entailed - just another small piece of information would have helped. Anything.

There were no torches you could use to carry the flame with you, so you would have to go out further into the cold again. Maybe there were more checkpoints further on in the woods? You grabbed one of the thicker branches from off the ground, one that seemed dry enough and lit it on fire. The flames would help you to see much better than you could before, and you would probably be able to see things that you might have missed without it. Also, the warmth was inviting and brought a sense of comfort in the place shrouded with so much mystery. The small wisps of orange and yellow swirled around the branch - your make-shift torch - and helped you see, even if it was only a little better. At least you could see the ground you were walking on. That would prevent some uneventful tripping and a visit to the forest floor. 

Well, you stumbled anyway on some thorns that got a bit too attached to your leather boots. They were so long and deeply rooted in the soil, you had no choice but to carefully pull them away with your free hand. Wouldn't want to buy another pair, as that wouldn't come cheap.

Taking a few steps forward, you noticed something odd about the fire. Small embers seemed determined to head off in a single direction, even though nothing was supposedly pulling it that way. It had a mind of its own. Cautiously, you followed the fiery trail, eyeing it warily as it brought you swerving in and out amongst the freaky works of tree-trunk and tall grass creeping in around you. You felt you were getting somewhere.

Until you weren't anymore.

The ravenous flames ate up the rest of the branch, closing in on your fingers. Avoiding a nasty burn, you instinctively dropped the wood and trodded on it with your boots, smothering the fire and dousing it out (to prevent setting the whole forest alight... that would probably leave you in the bad books of Fiore permanently).